West Va. Internet consultant paid $512k in federal stimulus funds

Earlier this year, reports emerged that West Virginia had become the home of the $22,000 router. Using federal stimulus money, state officials decided to install more than 1,000 public institutions with enterprise-grade Cisco routers, according to reports in the Charleston Gazette. The sites included rural libraries with just a few computers, which could have been just fine spending less than $500 on a router, if not less than $100.

Now it turns out that not only are officials in the Mountain State spending big sums on high-powered routers; they're also richly rewarding the consultants in charge of planning the whole fiasco. A story published today in the Gazette reports $1.3 million has been spent on consultants hired through a contract with Verizon.

The highest-paid one, Perry Rios, was paid $196 an hour, for a total of $731,770 through the end of last month. Rios, who lives in Colorado, made $512,000 in 2011 and is on track to earn another $329,000 this year.

Rios isn't the only high-dollar consultant hired by the state. Two network engineers were paid $252,075 and $143,490 under $150-an-hour contracts. Two in-state project managers were paid $99,661 and $97,500 respectively, under $250-an-hour contracts. The five consultants were paid $1.3 million in total. All of the payroll information is based on a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the Gazette.

None of the five consultants appear to have spoken at any public meetings, including monthly meetings of the Broadband Deployment Council (BDC). Rios has met twice with the BDC's chairman, but none of the five consultants have filed any reports with those agencies. For his part, Rios also meets regularly with the "Tiger Team"—a group charged with ensuring public facilities get their upgraded routers and fiber-optic connections—and participates in conference calls with the federal agency that distributed the funds.

West Virginia officials justified the high-priced consultants by saying they were needed to oversee the massive scope of the project. The state received $126.3 million in federal funds to upgrade its broadband Internet network, getting routers and fiber-optic cable to more than 1,000 public institutions, including schools, libraries, state agencies, and health centers.

"This work goes far beyond our current staffing resources," Gale Given, chief technology officer for West Virginia, told Gazette reporter Eric Eyre. "These professionals are necessary to provide engineering, project management and other functions, and to coordinate the various parties that are involved in the grant."

Rios has a state voicemail and e-mail address, but didn't respond to calls and e-mails from the newspaper requesting comment.

The final kicker: Rios' job functions seem to be largely mirrored by another "project manager," Nick Patel, already working in a state technology office.

The Gazette's earlier reports about the pricey routers ultimately made their way to Congress, where state officials actually defended the purchases as an "economical" decision.

"All of this might be funny if West Virginia wasn't still a broadband backwater," opines Karl Bode of DSL Reports, who also blames Verizon for neglecting the state's infrastructure. "They're also the worst in the country in terms of a disconnected populace, with recent FCC data showing that 46 percent of the state's residents don't have access to broadband."